Prince William and his wife Catherine are set to make a criminal complaint against the photographer who took topless pictures of the Duchess sunbathing at a secluded French villa.

The grainy photos of the Duchess of Cambridge on holiday in Provence were originally published in French celebrity magazine Closer.

Over the weekend the Irish Star broke ranks with its local and UK rivals to publish the photos, and Italian magazine Chi is set to splash them across a 26-page special edition later today with the headline "The Queen is naked".

The photos have rekindled memories in Britain of the media pursuit of William's mother, Princess Diana, who was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997 while being chased by paparazzi.

The couple, currently on tour in the Pacific, have condemned the photos as "grotesque", and their lawyers will seek an injunction in a Paris court today to prevent further publication.

They will also seek damages from Closer, the French magazine which first published them.

"We can confirm that a criminal complaint is to be made to the French Prosecution Department tomorrow [Monday]," a St James's Palace spokeswoman said late on Sunday [UK time].

But it is unclear what effect any French ruling will have on other jurisdictions.

UK lawyer Mark Stephens says the Duchess of Cambridge had a reasonable expectation of privacy at the remote French estate.

"The photographer should never have crawled through the undergrowth in order to use a telephoto lens the length of somebody's dining room table in order to get these rather grainy pictures," he said

Former British prime minister Sir John Major, who was appointed as a guardian to William and brother Harry when they lost their mother, says William and Kate are within their rights to sue.

"They way they've been obtained is tasteless, it is the action of a peeping tom," he said.

'Time not on their side'

In Italy, Chi's editor Alfonso Signorini says the pictures are a scoop, not a scandal.

Royal photographer Harry Page says lawyers will have to work fast to stop the edition, which comes out today.

"Time is not on their side," he said.

"Whether you can get an Italian judge out of his home to sit in a court to listen to their case over the weekend, I wouldn't be sure."

Both Chi and Closer are published by Italy's Mondadori, part of former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi's media empire, and chaired by his daughter Marina.

She has denied that the former premier had turned down a request by Buckingham Palace not to publish.

"My father is a politician and, with all respect, is busy with other things and has no time to think about a photo reportage," Ms Berlusconi wrote in a vitriolic letter to the daily La Repubblica, which reported the allegation.

"Secondly, Mondadori, which I chair, is a publisher that uses to the best of its ability the freedom that its shareholders have always given it."

The Irish Daily Star went ahead and published the photos over the weekend but Britain's tabloid papers, fighting for their reputations, have refrained.

Even the best-selling Sun tabloid, the only British title to run pictures of William's brother Harry cavorting naked in a Las Vegas hotel last month, has declared the photos off-limits.

Irish Daily Star Mike O'Kane made no apologies for publishing them, but the editor of the British arm of the newspaper, Gareth Morgan, says newspaper co-owner Richard Desmond is furious.

"In the past we've had the situation with the pictures of Prince Harry and very quickly we took the decision not to go ahead with this," Mr Morgan said.

"We always try to be responsible in our decision making when it comes to publishing pictures that intrude into someone's private life, and this is a clear case where someone's massively overstepped the mark."

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